


Pierced to the Root

by used_songs



Category: Torchwood
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-20
Updated: 2010-03-20
Packaged: 2017-10-08 04:08:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/72537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/used_songs/pseuds/used_songs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Betas: LeFaym and antelope_writes, with encouragement from redsnake05 <br/>Prompt: "Things change after the Year that Never Was. Jack touches him with more desperation. There are always more bruises." by nekokazuki</p><p>Kink: desperate sex, neediness, marking/biting</p>
    </blockquote>





	Pierced to the Root

**Author's Note:**

> Betas: LeFaym and antelope_writes, with encouragement from redsnake05   
> Prompt: "Things change after the Year that Never Was. Jack touches him with more desperation. There are always more bruises." by nekokazuki
> 
> Kink: desperate sex, neediness, marking/biting

_Whan that aprill with his shoures soote  
The droghte of march hath perced to the roote,_

_ And bathed every veyne in swich licour  
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;_

\- Lines 1-4, Canterbury Tales: Prologue, Geoffrey Chaucer

_The force that through the green fuse drives the flower  
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees  
Is my destroyer.  
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose  
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever._

\- "The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower", Dylan Thomas

Life ever renewing, the green fuse ever flowing, poetry not even beginning to describe it, words just words, the terror of always being left behind, of waking from every little death, pierced and yet risen again. Falling and rising. I am here when you fall asleep and I am here when you awake. I am here. I watch you all the time, now. I watch you even when it appears that I am unaware. I watch. I want.

This is the season, I think. Renewal and spring warmth and thunderstorms, water running through the soil and pushing the little plants from underneath the cover of dead leaves burned by the cold. This is the season when my blood rises in rhythm with the blood of the world. Even though it's not my world; I am not made from this soil and so can never return to it. I look over at you, across the conference table, and I feel such a battering wave of desire that I go blind for a moment. I could reach out and draw you over to me, and I think you know what I am thinking because you look at me. A guarded look. A close look, like a lock and key together.

We all stand up and go back to work, and I go back to my office to think.

I stood in chains and I died, and I watched the one I thought I loved sacrifice me a thousand times for the sake of his blood kin. And he told me I was wrong. I hung in chains and watched you die. Though you once called me a monster, you have never called me wrong. So when I see you now … when I touch you now … it is hard for me to put all of that away. We are different.

I came back for you. Let me touch you. I say the words softly.

And you do. You play at evasion, but you come to me.

Maybe it's the edge that comes from a relationship that began and ended in betrayal, and then began again in careful pain. Maybe it's because I have known you dead and will know you dead again. Maybe it's just hard physical fact, our bodies speaking to each other of what they need. But to touch you is to grip and twist and be unable to release. To feel the blood pulsing in your veins, burning me. To dig my fingertips into your flesh, unable to let go this time.

A desire that sometimes frightens me. A desire that makes me look away and swallow sometimes because it burns so brightly.

Later, you come into my office in search of coffee cups and I flash up from the desk as if I had planned this. I back you up against the wall, shove you back harder with one forearm high across your chest, over your heart, and cover your mouth with my own. Your eyes widen and you give me a pointed eyebrow as I move back far enough to get my other arm between us and I jerk your shirttails out, whip off your tie. But then … but then when I release your mouth and bury my face against your neck, and then when I breathe deeply to inhale you into my mouth and throat and sinuses until I am dizzy with lust and then lick skin and stubble carefully to feel you shiver and then when I bite down into muscle and feel you surge against me, I bear down on you with that arm and force your jacket, your waistcoat, your shirt open with my other, errant hand, wrenching off buttons that scatter like seeds on the floor, digging deep, forcing your hips back against the brickwork. And you gasp and mutter something and I bite down again, harder, and feel you squirm and I can taste you. Your eyes are probably closing as you let your head fall back against the wall like a flower seeking the sun and you are very still. You grow hot under me. You open up and fall into me.

Then I bite higher up, where the mark can be seen, and you start to struggle again, laughing a little, and this is what I have been waiting for. I seize you by layers of cloth and you reach out and touch my face and then you let me drag you across the room as I slam the door closed with my foot. And then I pull you back hidden by the echoes and push you down onto the hard floor. I do not look into your eyes. Maybe they are closed. I look at everything else. Maybe I can feel you trying to see me, but I'm not quite ready for that.

You struggle some more, now silently, but you also move against me and breathe me in like air. I fall down on top of you. I measure my length against yours, unfasten your clothes completely, spread them out like petals thumbed open. You bring hands up to touch me again, haltingly and so softly, and I rise up and I grip your forearms and force them to the floor, push you into the concrete with all of my strength and lean down to kiss you with lips and tongue and teeth. You sigh into my mouth and you say, "Jack," and a pale, secret root drives deep down into me.

I say, "Ianto," and I slide down again and I move a hand to your face and grip your chin and force you to look at me now while I open your trousers and while I burrow into your boxers and while I touch you and stroke you. I force you to look at me now while I run a fingernail up the length of your cock and I watch you move, your eyes widen, you wince. But you kiss me. And I force you to look at me now when I grip you roughly and hurt you a little bit and you part your lips and I must kiss you and your moans fill me up, and then you are smiling up at me and it is you.

I walk a pilgrimage across your body; you are the road home, my feet bruising your flesh. I tell myself I don't know what I am hunting here, except that I do. I am hunting the life that hammers at your skin from inside, and I am meeting it blow for blow and making bruises dark as dirt. You grip the sides of my head and pull me down so many times that I am drowning and I, for my part, clasp your shoulders, drive thumbs against your collar bones, join my trembling hands around your throat, and I whisper, as you come, "What is life, Ianto? What is this?"

And you whisper back, "I don't know."

 

Later, when you roll up your shirt sleeves after the others have gone, running your palms over your forearms, I see the fingermarks, bruising there, after such a drought of touching.

Desire beats in my temples again. And you smile at me.


End file.
